Portraiture Quotes

There is no self-portrait of me.

— Gustav Klimt

All art is self-portraiture.

— Kehinde Wiley

Everything I paint is a portrait, whatever the subject.

— Jamie Wyeth

I am not altogether displeased with the shirt-front.

— Paul Cezanne

My approach to portraiture is conceptual.

— Amy Sherald

If a figure doesn't look back at you, you forget it.

— Nathan Oliveira

Like Chekhov, I am a collector of souls... if I hadn't been an artist, I could have been a psychiatrist.

— Alice Neel

I don't have lots of things in the background. I do like large faces, I find them strong and contemporary.

— Paul Emsley

If my people look as if they're in a dreadful fix, it's because I can't get them out of a technical dilemma.

— Francis Bacon

A competent portraitist knows how to imply the profile in the full face.

— Aldous Huxley

The self-portrait is an act of objectifying the self and in that regard is a unique form of portraiture.

— Burton Silverman

I loathe my own face, and I've done self-portraits because I've had nobody else to do.

— Francis Bacon

Listen: if I am a painter and I do your portrait, have I or haven't I the right to paint you as…

— Oriana Fallaci

With an 'advanced' artist, it's not now possible to make a portrait.

— Clement Greenberg

The artist does not see both eyes alike. There is always 'the eye' and the other eye... It adds life and plasticity…

— John French Sloan

The photographer, even in fashion and portraiture, has to have a standpoint. It's important to know what you stand for, no? Most…

— Peter Lindbergh

What it is is a type of editorialization, you know? This is self-portraiture. This is what you think about the world we…

— Kehinde Wiley

God often lays the sum of His amazing providences in very dismal afflictions; as the limner first puts on the dusky colors,…

— Stephen Charnock

I never paint a portrait from a photograph, because a photograph doesn't give enough information about what the person feels.

— Francesco Clemente

Nothing in a portrait is a matter of indifference. Gesture, grimace, clothing, decor even - all must combine to realize a character.

— Charles Baudelaire

I have a really strong suspicion of the romantic nature of portraiture, the idea that you're telling some essential truth about the…

— Kehinde Wiley

Beware how in making the portraiture thou breakest the pattern: for divinity maketh the love of ourselves the pattern; the love of…

— John Locke

I still find doing portraits a terrific challenge, but even though I've done hundreds of them, I've never stopped questioning the very…

— Duane Michals

I had no aspirations to become a landscape photographer at all. In fact it was portraiture that was my beginning, I suppose.…

— Fay Godwin

Painting someone's portrait is, of course, an impossible task. What an absurd idea to try and distil a human being, the most…

— David Cobley

Every single person is unlike anyone else. Therefore, in creating a portrait of someone... we must look carefully to catch that particular…

— Alton Tobey

The portrait painter... If he insults his sitters his occupation is gone. Whether he paints the should instead of the features, or…

— Walter J. Phillips

Boswell's Johnson is the word made flesh... an extemporaneous man talking himself into the thick of every occasion (in a world ofoccasions…

— Marvin Mudrick

Going to the Huntington gardens and libraries was radically important for me. They have one of the best collections of 18th- and…

— Kehinde Wiley

You start with a generic body, but I think the first wall you hit with portraiture is comprised of history and storytelling…

— Kiki Smith

In the years since The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin, Voinovich has sharpened his satire, and Monumental Propaganda is…

— Ken Kalfus

Where some may see flat, static narratives, I see a spectrum of tonal gradations and realities. What I am creating is literally…

— Toyin Odutola

“You should regard each meeting with a friend as a sitting he is unwillingly giving you for a portrait - a portrait…

— Hope Mirrlees

The thing that's fascinating about portraiture is that nobody is alike.

— Imogen Cunningham

You have no idea what portrait painters suffer from the vanity of their sitters.

— Kenneth Clark

One is never satisfied with the portrait of a person that one knows.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

When I'm painting and drawing I only do people. Acting is obviously portraiture - and writing is as well.

— Antony Sher

I never could have predicted that I would have done something that could be called portraiture.

— Laurie Simmons

To get someone to pose, you have to be very good friends and above all speak the language.

— Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Ah! Portraiture, portraiture with the thought, the soul of the model in it, that is what I think must come.

— Vincent Van Gogh